


Beauty in Resistance

by Kaylajojo



Category: SKAM (TV)
Genre: Angst, Divergent AU, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Minor Character Death, Violence, William is in this but he is an asshole so it is not ooc
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-11
Updated: 2017-07-12
Packaged: 2018-11-30 15:31:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,688
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11466429
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kaylajojo/pseuds/Kaylajojo
Summary: Isak Valtersen's society is divided into five factions—Candor, Abnegation, Dauntless, Amity, and Erudite. Isak must choose between staying with his Abnegation family or transferring factions. His choice will shock his community and himself, but Isak also has a secret, one he's determined to keep hidden, because in this world, what makes you different also makes you dangerous.Alternatively the Divergent AU nobody asked for





	1. The beginning

There is only one mirror in Isak’s house. It is behind a sliding panel in the hallway upstairs. His faction allows him to stand in front of it on the second day of every third month, the day his mother trims his hair.

 

As Isak sits on a stool with his mother standing behind him with the scissors, trimming, the curled strands fall to the floor in a dull, blond ring.

 

When Isak’s mother finishes, she soothes his hair away from his face. She looks on and you can see how focused she truly is. She is well-practiced in the art of losing herself. Isak however can’t say the same for himself.

 

Isak sneaks a look at his reflection when his mother isn’t paying attention—not for the sake of vanity, but out of pure curiosity. A lot can happen to a person’s appearance in three months. In his reflection, he sees a narrow face, dulled eyes, and a thin nose—still looking like a small child, though sometime in the last few months he had turned sixteen. The other factions celebrate birthdays, but his doesn’t. It would be self-indulgent.

 

“There,” his mother says when she has pushed each curl of Isak’s into place with perfect precision. Her eyes catch his in the mirror. It is too late to look away, but instead of scolding him, she smiles at their reflection. Isak frowns a little. _Why doesn’t she reprimand him for staring at himself?_

 

“So today is the day,” she says boldly into the quietness of the room.

 

“Yes,” Isak replies shakily.

 

“Are you nervous?”

 

Isak stares into his own eyes for a moment. Today is the day of the aptitude test that will show him which of the five factions he belongs in. And tomorrow, at the Choosing Ceremony, he must decide on a faction; he will decide the rest of his life; will he decide to stay with his family or abandon them.

 

“No,” Isak says softly. “The tests don’t have to change our choices.”

 

“Right.” She smiles. “Let’s go eat breakfast.”

 

“Thank you, for fixing my hair.”

 

She kisses his cheek and slides the panel over the mirror. He thinks his mother could be beautiful, in a different world. Her body is thin beneath her gray robe. She has high cheekbones and long eyelashes, and when she lets her hair down at night, it hangs in blond waves over her shoulders. Unfortunately she must hide that beauty in Abnegation.

 

They walk together to the kitchen. On these mornings when Isak’s sister makes breakfast, and his father’s hand skims Isak’s hair as he reads the newspaper, and his mother hums as she clears the table—it is on these mornings that Isak feels guiltiest for wanting to leave them.

 

.

 

The bus stinks of exhaust. Every time it hits a patch of uneven pavement, it jostles Isak from side to side, even though he is gripping the seat to keep himself still.

 

His older sister, Lea, stands in the aisle, holding a railing above her head to keep herself steady. The two don’t look alike. She has their father’s dark hair and hooked nose and their mother’s green eyes and dimpled cheeks. When she was younger, that collection of features looked strange, but now it suits her. If she wasn’t Abnegation, I’m sure the boys at school would stare at her.

 

She also inherited their mother’s talent for selflessness. She gave her seat to a surly Candor man on the bus without a second thought.

 

The Candor man wears a black suit with a white tie—Candor standard uniform. Their faction values honesty and sees the truth as black and white, so that is what they wear.

 

The gaps between the buildings narrow and the roads are smoother as they near the heart of the city. The building that was once called the Sears Tower—it is now called the Hub—emerges from the fog, a black pillar in the skyline. The bus passes under the elevated tracks where the train passes overhead. Isak has never been on a train, though they never stop running and there are tracks everywhere. Only the Dauntless ride them.

 

Lea’s expression is placid as the bus sways and jolts on the road. The gray robe falls from her arm as she clutches a pole for balance. Isak can tell by the constant shift of her eyes that she is watching the people around her—striving to see only them and to forget herself. Candor values honesty, but their faction, Abnegation, values selflessness.

 

The bus stops in front of the school and Isak gets up, scooting past the Candor man. He grabs Lea’s arm as he stumbles over the man’s shoes. His slacks are too long, and he has never been that graceful.

 

.

 

The Upper Levels building is the oldest of the three schools in the city: Lower Levels, Mid-Levels, and Upper Levels. Like all the other buildings around it, it is made of glass and steel. In front of it is a large metal sculpture that the Dauntless climb after school, daring each other to go higher and higher. Last year Isak watched one of them fall and break their leg. He was the one who ran to get the nurse.

 

“Aptitude tests today,” Isak mumbles. Lea is not quite a year older than Isak is, so they are in the same year at school.

 

She nods as the two of them pass through the front doors. Isak’s muscles tighten the second they walk in. The atmosphere feels hungry, like every sixteen-year-old is trying to devour as much as they can get of their last day. It is likely that they will not walk these halls again after the Choosing Ceremony—once you choose, your new factions will be responsible for finishing your education.

 

Classes are cut in half today, so they will attend all of them before the aptitude tests, which take place after lunch. Isak’s heart rate is already elevated.

 

“You aren’t at all worried about what they’ll tell you?” Isak stutters towards Lea.

 

They both pause at the split in the hallway where Lea will go one way, toward Advanced Math, and Isak will go the other, toward Faction History.

 

She raises an eyebrow towards Isak. “Are you?”

 

Isak could tell her that he’s been worried for weeks about what the aptitude test will tell him—Abnegation, Candor, Erudite, Amity, or Dauntless?

 

Instead he smiles and brightly says, “Not really.”

 

She smiles back. “Well okay good deal…have a wonderful day Issy.”

 

.

 

Isak walks toward Faction History, chewing on his lower lip. Lea never answered his question.

 

The hallways are cramped, though the light coming through the windows creates the illusion of space; this is one of the only places where the factions mix, at our age. Today the crowd has a new kind of energy, a last day excitement.

 

A girl with long curly hair shouts “Hey!” next to Isak’s ear, waving at a distant friend, then a jacket sleeve smacks him on the cheek and as the cherry on top an Erudite boy in a blue sweater shoves him. Isak loses his balance and falls hard onto the ground.

 

“Out of my way, Stiff,” the boy snaps, and continues down the hallway.

 

Isak’s cheeks warm. He gets up and dust himself off. A few people stopped when he fell, but none of them offered to help him. Their eyes follow him to the edge of the hallway. This sort of thing has been happening to others in his faction for months now—the Erudite have been releasing antagonistic reports about Abnegation, and it has begun to affect the way they relate at school. The gray clothes, the plain hairstyle, and the unassuming demeanor of his faction are supposed to make it easier for him to forget himself, and easier for everyone else to forget him too. But now they make him a target.

 

Isak pauses by a window in the E Wing and waits for the Dauntless to arrive. He does this every morning. At exactly 7:25, the Dauntless prove their bravery by jumping from a moving train.

 

Isak’s father calls the Dauntless “hellions.” They are pierced, tattooed, and black-clothed. Their primary purpose is to guard the fence that surrounds the city. From what, Isak doesn't know.

 

They should perplex him. He should wonder what courage—which is the virtue they most value—has to do with a metal ring through your nostril. Instead his eyes cling to them wherever they go.

 

The train whistle blares, the sound resonating in Isak’s chest. The light fixed to the front of the train clicks on and off as the train hurtles past the school, squealing on iron rails. And as the last few cars pass, a mass group of young men and women in dark clothing hurl themselves from the moving cars, some dropping and rolling, others stumbling a few steps before regaining their balance. One of the boys wraps his arm around another boy’s shoulders, laughing.

 

Watching them is a foolish practice. So he turns away from the window and presses through the crowd to his Faction History classroom.


	2. A Betrayal of Abnegation Values

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Isak presses out air from his lungs and tips the contents of the vial into his mouth. His eyes close.
> 
> When they open, an instant has passed, but he is somewhere else.

The tests begin after lunch. All the kids are sat at the long tables in the cafeteria, and the test administrators call ten names at a time, one for each testing room. Isak sits next to Lea and across from their neighbor Mari.

 

Mari’s father travels throughout the city for his job, so he has a car and drives her to and from school every day. He offered to drive Isak and Lea, too, but as Lea says, _they prefer to leave later and would not want to inconvenience him._

 

Of course not.

 

The test administrators are mostly Abnegation volunteers, although there is an Erudite in one of the testing rooms and a Dauntless in another to test those from Abnegation, because the rules state that a person can’t be tested by someone from their own faction. The rules also say that you can’t prepare for the test in any way, so Isak doesn't know what to expect.

 

Isak’s gaze drifts from Mari to the Dauntless tables across the room. They are laughing and shouting and playing cards. At another set of tables, the Erudite chatter over books and newspapers, in constant pursuit of knowledge.

 

A group of Amity girls in yellow and red sit in a circle on the cafeteria floor, playing some kind of hand-slapping game involving a rhyming song. Every few minutes you can hear a chorus of laughter from them as someone is eliminated and has to sit in the center of the circle. At the table next to them, Candor boys make wide gestures with their hands. They appear to be arguing about something, but it must not be serious, because some of them are still smiling.

 

At the Abnegation table, we sit quietly and wait. Faction customs dictate even idle behavior and supersede individual preference. Isak doubts all of the Erudite want to study all the time, or that every Candor enjoys a lively debate, but they can’t defy the norms of their factions any more than Isak can.

 

Lea’s name is called in the next group. She moves confidently toward the exit. Isak doesn't need to wish her luck or assure her that she shouldn’t be nervous. She knows where she belongs, and as far as he knows, she always has. Isak’s earliest memory of her is from when they were four years old. She scolded him for not giving his jump rope to a little girl on the playground who didn’t have anything to play with. She doesn’t lecture him often anymore, but Isak has her look of disapproval memorized.

 

He has tried to explain to her that his instincts are not the same as hers—it didn’t even enter his mind to give his seat to the Candor man on the bus—but she doesn’t understand. “Just do what you’re supposed to,” she always says. It is that easy for her. It should be that easy for Isak too.

 

Isak’s stomach wrenches. He closes his eyes and keeps them closed until ten minutes later, when Lea sits down again.

 

She is plaster-pale. She pushes her palms along her legs like Isak does when he wipes off sweat, and when she brings them back, her fingers shake. Isak goes to open his mouth to ask her something, but the words don’t come. He is not allowed to ask her about her results, and she is not allowed to tell him.

 

An Abnegation volunteer speaks the next round of names. Two from Dauntless, two from Erudite, two from Amity, two from Candor, and then: “From Abnegation: Mari Bech and Isak Valtersen.”

 

Isak gets up because he’s supposed to, but if it were up to him, he would stay in his seat for the rest of time. He feels like there is a bubble in his chest that expands more by the second, threatening to break him apart from the inside. Isak follows Mari to the exit. The people he passes probably can’t tell them apart. They wear the same clothes and have blond hair. The only difference is that Mari is a girl and she also might not feel like she’s going to throw up, and from what he can tell, her hands aren’t shaking so hard that she has to clutch the hem of her shirt to steady them.

 

Waiting for them outside the cafeteria is a row of ten rooms. They are used only for the aptitude tests, so Isak has never been in one before. Unlike the other rooms in the school, they are separated, not by glass, but by mirrors. He watches himself, pale and terrified, walking towards one of the doors. Mari grins nervously at Isak as she walks into room 5, and he walks into room 6, where a Dauntless woman waits for him.

 

She is not as severe-looking as the other young Dauntless Isak has seen. She has small, dark, angular eyes and wears a black hijab—It is only when she turns to close the door that he sees a tattoo on the back of her hand, a black-and-white hawk with a red eye. If Isak didn’t feel like his heart had migrated to his throat, he would've ask her what it signifies. It must signify something.

 

Mirrors cover the inner walls of the room. Isak can see his reflection from all angles: the gray fabric obscuring the shape of his back, his long neck, his knobby-knuckled hands, red with a blood blush. The ceiling glows white with light. In the center of the room is a reclined chair, like a dentist’s, with a machine next to it. It looks like a place where terrible things happen.

 

“Don’t worry,” the woman says, “it doesn’t hurt.”

 

“Have a seat and get comfortable,” she says. “My name is Sana.”

 

Clumsily Isak sits in the chair and reclines, putting his head on the headrest. The lights hurts his eyes. Sana busies herself with the machine on his right. He tries to focus on her and not on the wires in her hands.

 

“Why the hawk?” Isak blurts out as she attaches an electrode to his forehead.

 

“Never met a curious Abnegation before,” she says, raising her eyebrows at him.

 

Isak shivers, and goose bumps appear on his arms. His curiosity is a mistake, a betrayal of Abnegation values.

 

Humming a little, she presses another electrode to his forehead and explains, “In some parts of the ancient world, the hawk symbolized the sun. Back when I got this, I figured if I always had the sun on me, I wouldn’t be afraid of the dark.”

 

Isak tries to stop himself from asking another question, but he can’t help it. “You’re afraid of the dark?”

 

“I was afraid of the dark,” she corrects him. She presses the next electrode to her own forehead, and attaches a wire to it. She shrugs. “Now it reminds me of the fear I’ve overcome.”

 

She stands behind Isak. He squeezes the armrests so tightly the redness pulls away from his knuckles. She tugs wires toward her, attaching them to him, to her, to the machine behind her. Then Sana passes him a vial of clear liquid.

 

“Drink this,” she says.

 

“What is it?” Isak's throat feels swollen. He swallows hard. “What’s going to happen?”

 

“Can’t tell you that. Just trust me.”

 

Isak presses out air from his lungs and tips the contents of the vial into his mouth. His eyes close.

 

When they open, an instant has passed, but he is somewhere else. He stands in the school cafeteria again, but all the long tables are empty, and through the glass walls it’s snowing. On the table in front of him is two baskets. In one is a hunk of cheese, and in the other, a knife the length of his own forearm.

 

Behind him, a woman’s voice says, “Choose.”

 

“Why?” Isak whispers.

 

“Choose,” she repeats.

 

Isak looks over his shoulder, but no one is there. He turns back to the baskets. “What will I do with them?”

 

“Choose!” she yells.

 

When she screams at him, his fear disappears and stubbornness replaces it. He scowls and crosses his arms.

 

“Have it your way,” she says.

 

The baskets disappear. Isak then hears a door squeak and turns to see who it is. He sees not a “who” but a “what”: A dog with a pointed nose stands a few yards away from him. It crouches low and creeps toward him, its lips peeling back from its white teeth. A growl gurgles from deep in its throat, and he can see why the cheese would have come in handy. Or the knife. But it’s too late now.

 

Isak thinks about running, but the dog will be faster than him. He can’t wrestle it to the ground. His head pounds. He has to make a decision. If he can jump over one of the tables and use it as a shield—no, for once in his life he is too short, to jump over the tables, and not strong enough to tip one over.

 

The dog snarls, and Isak can almost feel the sound vibrating in his skull.

His biology textbook said that dogs can smell fear because of a chemical secreted by human glands in a state of duress, the same chemical a dog’s prey secretes. Smelling fear leads them to attack. The dog inches toward him, its nails scraping the floor.

 

Isak can’t run. He can’t fight. Instead he breathes in the smell of the dog’s foul breath and tries not to think about what it just ate. There are no whites in its eyes, just a black gleam.

 

What else does he know about dogs? He shouldn’t look it in the eye. That’s a sign of aggression. He remembers asking his father for a pet dog when he was young, and now, staring at the ground in front of the dog’s paws, He can’t remember why. It comes closer, still growling. If staring into its eyes is a sign of aggression, what’s a sign of submission?

 

Isak’s breaths are loud but steady. He sinks to his knees. The last thing he wants to do is lie down on the ground in front of the dog—making its teeth level with his face—but it’s the best option he has. Isak stretches his legs out behind him and leans on his elbows. The dog creeps closer, and closer, until he can feel its warm breath on his face. His arms are shaking.

 

It barks in his ear, and he clenches his teeth to keep from screaming.

Something rough and wet touches Isak’s cheek. The dog’s growling stops, and when he lifts his head to look at it again, it is panting. It licked his face. Isak frowns and sits on his heels. The dog props its paws up on his knees and licks his chin. Isak cringes, wiping the drool from his skin, and laughs.

“You’re not such a vicious beast, huh?”

 

He gets up slowly so he doesn't startle it, but it seems like a different animal than the one that faced him a few seconds ago. He stretches out a hand, carefully, so he can draw it back if he needs to. The dog nudges Isak’s hand with its head. He is suddenly glad he didn’t pick up the knife.

 

He blinks, and when he opens his eyes, a child stands across the room wearing a white dress. She stretches out both hands and squeals, “Puppy!”

 

As she runs toward the dog at his side, Isak opens his mouth to warn her, but he is too late. The dog turns. Instead of growling, it barks and snarls and snaps, and its muscles bunch up like coiled wire. About to pounce. Isak doesn't think, he just jumps; he hurls his body on top of the dog, wrapping his arms around its thick neck.

 

His head hits the ground. The dog is gone, and so is the little girl. Instead he is alone—in the testing room, now empty. He turns in a slow circle and can’t see himself in any of the mirrors. He pushes the door open and walks into the hallway, but it isn’t a hallway; it’s a bus, and all the seats are taken.

He stands in the aisle and holds on to a pole. Sitting near Isak is a man with a newspaper. He can’t see his face over the top of the paper, but he can see his hands. They are scarred, like he was burned, and they clench around the paper like he wants to crumple it.

 

“Do you know this guy?” he asks. He taps the picture on the front page of the newspaper. The headline reads: “Brutal Murderer Finally Apprehended!” Isak stares at the word “murderer.” It has been a long time since he last read that word, but even its shape fills him with dread.

 

In the picture beneath the headline is a young man with a plain face and a beard. Isak feels like he does know him, though he doesn't remember how. And at the same time, He feels like it would be a bad idea to tell the man that.

 

“Well?” you can hear the anger in his voice. “Do you?”

 

A bad idea—no, a very bad idea. Isak’s heart pounds and he clutches the pole to keep his hands from shaking, from giving him away. If Isak tells him he knows the man from the article, something awful will happen to him. But he can convince him that he doesn’t. He can clear his throat and shrug his shoulders—but that would be a lie.

 

So Isak clears his throat.

 

“Do you?” he repeats.

 

Isak shrugs his shoulders.

 

“Well?”

 

A shudder goes through him. His fear is irrational; this is just a test, it isn’t real. “Nope,” Isak says, his voice casual. “No idea who he is.”

 

The man stands, and finally Isak can see his face. He wears dark sunglasses and his mouth is bent into a snarl. His cheeks are rippled with scars, like his hands. He leans close to Isak’s face. His breath smells like cigarettes. _Not real_ , Isak reminds himself. _Not real._

 

“You’re lying,” the man snarls. “You’re lying!”

 

“I am not.”

 

“I can see it in your eyes.”

 

Isak pulls himself up straighter. “You can’t.”

 

“If you know him,” he says in a low voice, “you could save me. You could save me!”

 

Isak narrows his eyes. “Well,” Isak says. He sets his jaw. “I don’t.”


	3. Choose wisely, little one

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Isak’s mother once told him that you can’t survive alone, but even if you could, you wouldn’t want to. Without a faction, you have no purpose and no reason to live.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter involves some slight harassment, if that makes you uncomfortable please skip it, you won't be losing anything about the central plot.

Isak wakes to sweaty palms and a pang of guilt in his chest. He is lying in the chair in the mirrored room. When he tilts his head back, he sees Sana behind him. She pinches her lips together and removes the electrodes from their heads. He waits for her to say something about the test—that it’s over, or that he did well, although how could he do poorly on a test like this?—but she says nothing, just pulls the wires from his forehead.

 

Isak sits forward and wipes his palms off on his slacks. He had to have done something wrong, even if it only happened in his mind. Is that strange look on Sana’s face because she doesn’t know how to tell him what a terrible person he is? He wishes she would just come out with it.

 

“That,” she says, “was perplexing. Excuse me, I’ll be right back.”

 

Perplexing?

 

Isak brings his knees to his chest and buries his face in them. He wishes he felt like crying, because the tears might bring him a sense of release, but he doesn’t. _How can you fail a test you aren’t allowed to prepare for?_

 

As the moments pass, Isak gets more nervous. He has to wipe off his hands every few seconds as the sweat collects—or maybe he just does it because it helps him feel calmer. What if they tell him that he’s not cut out for any faction? He would have to live on the streets, with the factionless. He can’t do that. To live factionless is not just to live in poverty and discomfort; it is to live divorced from society, separated from the most important thing in life: community.

 

Isak’s mother once told him that you can’t survive alone, but even if you could, you wouldn’t want to. Without a faction, you have no purpose and no reason to live.

 

Isak shakes his head _. He can’t think like this. He has to stay calm._

 

Finally the door opens, and Sana walks back in. Isak grips the arms of the chair.

 

“Sorry to worry you,” Sana says. She stands by his feet looking tense and pale.

 

“Isak, your results were inconclusive,” she says. “Typically, each stage of the simulation eliminates one or more of the factions, but in your case, only two have been ruled out.”

 

He stares at her. “Two?” he asks. His throat is so tight it’s hard to talk.

 

“If you had shown an automatic distaste for the knife and selected the cheese, the simulation would have led you to a different scenario that confirmed your aptitude for Amity. That didn’t happen, which is why Amity is out.” 

 

Sana rubs her hands together nervously. 

 

“Normally, the simulation progresses in a linear fashion, isolating one faction by ruling out the rest. The choices you made didn’t even allow Candor, the next possibility, to be ruled out, so I had to alter the simulation to put you on the bus. And there your insistence upon dishonesty ruled out Candor.” She half smiles. “Don’t worry about that. Only the Candor tell the truth in that one.”

 

One of the knots in Isak’s chest loosens. Maybe he’s not an awful person.

 

“I suppose that’s not entirely true. People who tell the truth are the Candor…and the Abnegation,” she says. “Which gives us a problem.”

 

His mouth falls open.

 

“On the one hand, you threw yourself on the dog rather than let it attack the little girl, which is an Abnegation-oriented response…but on the other, when the man told you that the truth would save him, you still refused to tell it. Not an Abnegation-oriented response.” She sighs. “Not running from the dog suggests Dauntless, but so does taking the knife, which you didn’t do.”

 

She clears her throat and continues. “Your intelligent response to the dog indicates strong alignment with the Erudite. I have no idea what to make of your indecision in stage one, but—”

 

“Wait,” Isak interrupts her. “So you have no idea what my aptitude is?”

 

“Yes and no. My conclusion,” she explains, “is that you display equal aptitude for Abnegation, Dauntless, and Erudite. People who get this kind of result are…” She looks over her shoulder like she expects someone to appear behind her. “…are called…Divergent.” She says the last word so quietly that Isak almost doesn’t hear it, and her tense, worried look returns. She walks around the side of the chair and leans in close to him.

 

“Isak,” she says, “under no circumstances should you share that information with anyone. This is very important.”

 

“We aren’t supposed to share our results.” He nods. “I know that.”

 

“No.” Sana kneels next to the chair now and places her arms on the armrest. Their faces are inches apart. “This is different. I don’t mean you shouldn’t share them now; I mean you should never share them with anyone, ever, no matter what happens. Divergence is extremely dangerous. You understand?”

 

He doesn't understand—how could inconclusive test results be dangerous?—but he still nods. He doesn't want to share his test results with anyone anyway.

 

“Okay.” Isak peels his hands from the arms of the chair and stands. He feels unsteady.

 

“I suggest,” Sana says gently, “that you go home. You have a lot of thinking to do, and waiting with the others may not benefit you.”

 

“I have to tell my sister where I’m going.”

 

“I’ll let her know.”

 

.

 

Isak touches his forehead and stares at the floor as he walks out of the room. He can’t bear to look her in the eye. He can’t bear to think about the Choosing Ceremony tomorrow.

 

It’s his choice now, no matter what the test says.

 

Abnegation. Dauntless. Erudite.

 

 _Divergent_.

 

Isak decides not to take the bus. If he gets home early, his father will notice when he checks the house log at the end of the day, and he will have to explain what happened. Instead he walks. He will have to intercept Lea before she mentions anything to our parents, but Lea can keep a secret.

 

Isak walks in the middle of the road. The buses tend to hug the curb, so it’s safer here. Sometimes, on the streets near his house, he can see places where the yellow lines used to be. They no longer have use now that there are so few cars. They don’t need stoplights, either, but in some places they dangle precariously over the road like they might crash down any minute.

 

Renovation moves slowly through the city, which is a patchwork of new, clean buildings and old, crumbling ones. Most of the new buildings are next to the marsh, which used to be a lake a long time ago. The Abnegation volunteer agency Isak’s mother works for is responsible for most of those renovations.

 

When Isak look at the Abnegation lifestyle as an outsider, he thinks it’s beautiful. When he watches his family move in harmony; when they go to dinner parties and everyone cleans together afterward without having to be asked; when he sees Lea help strangers carry their groceries, he falls in love with this life all over again. It’s only when he tries to live it himself that he has trouble. It never feels genuine.

 

But choosing a different faction means he forsakes his family. Permanently.

 

.

 

Just past the Abnegation sector of the city is the stretch of building skeletons and broken sidewalks that Isak now walks through. There are places where the road has completely collapsed, revealing sewer systems and empty subways that he has to be careful to avoid, and places that stink so powerfully of sewage and trash that he has to plug his nose.

 

This is where the factionless live. Because they failed to complete initiation into whatever faction they chose, they live in poverty, doing the work no one else wants to do. They are janitors and construction workers and garbage collectors; they make fabric and operate trains and drive buses. In return for their work they get food and clothing, but, as Isak’s mother says, not enough of either.

 

Isak can see a factionless man standing on the corner up ahead. He wears ragged brown clothing and skin sags from his jaw. He stares at Isak, and so Isak stares back at him, unable to look away.

 

“Excuse me,” the man says. His voice is raspy. “Do you have something I can eat?”

 

Isak can feel a lump in his throat. A stern voice in his head says, _Duck your head and keep walking._

 

No. He should not be afraid of this man. He needs help and Isak is supposed to help him.

 

“Um…yes,” Isak says quietly. He reaches into his bag. Isak’s father tells him to keep food in his bag at all times for exactly this reason. Isak offers the man a small bag of dried apple slices.

 

The man then reaches for them, but instead of taking the bag, his hand closes around Isak’s wrist. He smiles at him. He has a gap between his front teeth.

 

“My, don’t you have pretty eyes,” he says. “It’s a shame the rest of you is so plain.”

 

Isak tugs his hand back with a pounding in his heart, but the man’s grip tightens. Isak can smell something acrid and unpleasant on his breath.

 

“You look a little young to be walking around by yourself, little one,” he says.

 

Isak stops tugging, and stands up straighter. He knows he looks young; he doesn't need to be reminded. “I’m older than I look,” Isak retorts. “I’m sixteen.”

 

The man’s lips spread wide, revealing a gray molar with a dark pit in the side. Isak can’t tell if he’s smiling or grimacing. “Then isn’t today a special day for you? The day before you choose?”

 

“Let go of me,” Isak says. He can hear ringing in his ears. His voice sounds clear and stern—not what Isak expected to hear. He feels like it doesn’t belong to him.

 

Isak is ready. He knows what to do. He pictures himself bringing an elbow back and hitting the man. He can see the bag of apples flying away from him. He can hear his running footsteps. Isak is prepared to act.

 

But then just like that the man releases Isak’s wrist, takes the apples, and says, “Choose wisely, little one.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, so here in the next chapter or so Even will be introduced, if you know of some kind of name I could give him that would be reminiscent of Four's for the Divergent series please let me know. I also would love if anyone had ideas about what type of fear Isak could have that would be like Tris' birds. Thanks again!

**Author's Note:**

> Hello I hope you liked this so far, I will hopefully be updating this on a weekly basis.
> 
> Lots of love, Mj.
> 
> You can find me on Tumblr @PrincelyIsak


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